About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

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The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

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Friday, 30 November 2012

To Play The King

An Ass For A Lion? Always it is the lottery of succession that undoes the political efficacy of hereditary monarchy. Has the Kingitanga run up against the limits of its genetic inheritance?

WHAT IS A KING? If history is any guide he is the man other
men follow. The man with the best explanation or, failing that, the best
excuse. The sort of man who stands at the beginning of a tale: a carver of
kingdoms; a founder of dynasties. Duke William of Normandy – William the
Conqueror – stands as the prototype, the archetype, of this kind of king. The
strong war leader, the dux bellorum,
who transforms his sword into a sceptre.

But how are such men reproduced? How does the king/father
guarantee his subjects a successor fit to rule them? Always it is the lottery
of succession that undoes the political efficacy of monarchy. Or, as the Eighteenth
Century writer and revolutionary, Thomas Paine, put it: “One of the strongest
natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature
disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by
giving mankind an ass for a lion.”

The creation of the Kingitanga
(King Movement) is one of the greatest compliments Maori ever paid to Pakeha.
By creating parallel political structures to those of the colonial
administration, the beleaguered inland tribes of the North Island hoped to
develop a political authority equal to that of the Settler Government. The
distant British monarch and her local representatives would be required to deal
with an indigenous king. It was an imitative gesture which alarmed every bit as
much as it flattered the Pakeha politicians of the late-1850s.

The colonial government’s misgivings were unwarranted. The
first Maori King, Potatau, was no Duke William. He was a man of prestigious
lineage, rich in accumulated mana,
but his kingship came to him via the nomination of his peers – not from victory
on the battlefield. The Kingitanga
itself was the product not of fighters but of thinkers; educated men like
Wiremu Tamihana – known as “The Kingmaker”. From its very beginning, the Maori
Kingdom served as both symbol and statement: a plea for racial equality, due process
and an end to the illegal alienation of tribal lands.

Needless to say, it was roundly condemned by settler
politicians as both a barrier and a threat to the colony’s advancement. It took
18,000 troops to break the Maori Kingdom, but break it the Settler Government
did. That it survived at all – let alone into the Twenty-First Century – is
explicable only in terms of its evolution from a parallel political system into
a mystical hereditary taonga. For
more than a century the Maori monarchs have passed through the walls of the
Settler State with the ease of a phantom: holographic witnesses to the
festering injustices of the past.

Such ethereal figures need to be very careful how they
interact with the mundane world of pith and power. Like its British counterpart,
the Maori Monarchy has taken special care to be in the world but not of it.
Nothing’s been attempted which risked breaking the magic spell.

The reward, all $170 million of it, came in the form of the
Waikato-Tainui Settlement – over whose determined negotiators the Maori Queen
spread the feather-cloak of her carefully nurtured mana. Sadly, Waikato-Tainui’s settlement with the Crown of New
Zealand has turned out to be at the expense of its own. The ill-considered
choices of Dame Te Ātairangikaahu’s son and heir, King Tūheitia, are steadily
proving the truth of Tom Paine’s assessment of hereditary monarchy. More and
more it seems the Lioness has whelped an Ass.

Urged on by his courtiers and favourites, King Tūheitia
shows every sign of an intention to rule as well as reign. Te Kauhanganui, the Kingitanga parliament, established by
his predecessor, King Tawhiao, more than a century ago, has fought to secure
the Waikato-Tainui people’s interest in the settlement’s millions only to
witness its courageous leader, Tania Martin, brought low by palace intrigue and
political ambush. Urged on by his counsellors, King Tūheitia, now seeks to
become an absolute monarch: wielding full veto powers; free to summon and
prorogue his parliament at will.

The Crown of New Zealand will not tolerate so blatant a
pretender to its throne. If the Maori King aspires to be a politician then he
must divest himself of the mystery and mana
of his ancestors and endure the audit of democracy like any other citizen –
Pakeha or Maori.

Kings do not carry wallets.

This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 30 November 2012.

3 comments:

You make the same error as others-the $170 million was not the first settlement(nor even the second!). In 1944 the Crown settled with Tainui-a full and final settlement which just goes to show how much credence one should place of such statements. Of course the same man who managed to get in a 'catch-up clause' into into both Ngati Tahu and Tainui settlements is now the one who is paying them out the $139 million!